Dandy Gilver and an Unsuitable Day for a Murder

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘We had twenty very happy years,’ said Abigail. ‘Perhaps I should be grateful for that. It’s more than some people have in a lifetime. My husband has never done anything I can berate him for and I had my lovely girl, even if I was not allowed to keep her.’ Abigail pushed Bunty’s head off her lap and stood. ‘She was bought at a price,’ said Abigail. ‘That’s a saying of my mother’s.’

  ‘I’ve heard her say it.’ I spoke very gently. ‘The other day.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about what you said, Mrs Gilver. I can lift a burden from her, you know. I think I can. I can tell her it was not her fault that Mirren died. Shall I do that? Even if it hurts her in a new way she could not possibly be ready for. Should I?’

  ‘If you would tell me what you’re speaking about, Mrs Aitken,’ I said, ‘I could better advise you. Or I could go away and you could tell Mr Osborne here. He is, as you said, a very understanding man. He could help you.’ Waves of reluctance came off Alec like steam from a boiling kettle but he said nothing.

  ‘No,’ said Abigail. ‘I shall tell my mother – I’ve decided – that Mirren knew she wasn’t a fit wife for Dugald Hepburn, and why, and then my mother will know that she has nothing to be sorry for.’

  ‘You are a very good daughter,’ I said. ‘But can I give you a piece of advice, please?’ She said nothing, but waited. ‘Not today. You’re too tired today – for which I can only say sorry – and you will be better able to be kind and cushion bad news for your mother tomorrow.’

  Abigail passed a hand over her brow, sweeping her hair back, and she let out a ragged sigh. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I’m in no state right now to help anyone.’

  ‘Rest, Mrs Aitken,’ said Alec. He had not spoken for a long time.

  ‘I shall rest, Mr Osborne,’ she said. ‘And perhaps I shall even sleep. And when I wake up she will still be dead. Every time I wake up, just the same.’ She nodded to both of us and left the room.

  ‘Well,’ said Alec. ‘That was fun, wasn’t it?’

  Bunty stood up, stretched her front legs far out in front of her, leaned back and moaned. Then she stood up and shook herself all over, ears and jowls flapping.

  ‘Exactly, old girl,’ Alec said and he shook himself too, shuddering.

  I nodded absently, for I was thinking.

  ‘Punishment from God,’ I said. ‘Not blessed. Not a fit wife for Dugald. Alec, I think I know what made Mirren kill herself. Roughly, anyway.’

  ‘I’m not sure I want to hear,’ said Alec.

  ‘Too bad,’ I retorted. ‘Listen: Mary shoved her daughter into a cousin marriage. No children – punishment from God. Ninian died – punishment from God. Mary cracks up. Then Abigail suddenly out of nowhere has happy news for her mother. Years later, when Mirren is grown up, Mary doesn’t want a connection with the hated Hepburns – because of the unfortunate sisters and the feud – but Mirren and Dugald are adamant. Then Abigail persuades Mirren she shouldn’t marry into a callous, thoughtless, cruel family where she would not be cherished. On the other hand, it would have been all right to marry into a family who would have cherished her for her dowry and . . . looked the other way with regards to other matters.’

  ‘What other matters?’ Alec said.

  ‘Children,’ I said. ‘Progeny. Roger Lawson has two younger brothers and Dugald Hepburn had only sisters. Dugald was the only hope of carrying on the Hepburn name and Mirren . . . I have an idea that Mirren wasn’t the girl to help him.’

  ‘Dandy, that is the most disgusting thing I’ve heard in my life. Where did you get such an idea?’

  ‘I’m sure I’m right,’ I said. ‘There was something wrong with Mirren. Something no one except her mother knew. Something Mirren couldn’t bear when she found it out.’

  ‘And now Abigail is going to tell her mother this monstrous thing?’ Alec said.

  ‘After the rest that you so sweetly advised her to take,’ I reminded him. ‘You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.’

  ‘What?’ said Alec. ‘I was only adding my voice to yours.’

  ‘Yes, but you meant it, didn’t you? I was only trying to stop her getting to Mary before we had a crack at her. Because if she’s really losing her marbles, one of them might just roll our way.’

  10

  Mary Aitken looked to me like a woman who had all her marbles organised in order of size and weight, cross-referenced for colour, and spinning in time as she juggled them one-handed and kept the other hand free.

  ‘Mrs Gilver,’ she said. ‘Did you find a pair of opera gloves that suited you?’

  I bowed my head in acknowledgement.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Aitken, you saw through me yesterday.’

  ‘And you’ll not be here today to collect your fee?’ she said, stalking over to the chair opposite us and sitting down on its extreme edge. She sent a split-second, shrivelling glance towards Alec.

  ‘Mrs Gilver and I will not be sending you an account, Mrs Aitken,’ he said. ‘All things considered.’

  ‘And what is it you want?’ Mary said.

  I took a breath to answer and then closed my mouth again. We no longer wanted anything very much, as far as I could see. Between the Lawson boy, Jack and Hilda’s secret, Mirren’s unfitness, if I were right about that, and Mary’s hatred of the Hepburns, we had perhaps explained everyone’s disapproval of the marriage and we had provided motives for two suicides. Was it only loose ends to be tied in now?

  ‘We know that Mirren was hiding in the attics,’ Alec said, grabbing hold of one loose end and pulling firmly. ‘And we know about the note she left for you.’ If he had been hoping to surprise her he was disappointed. She only nodded.

  ‘It occurred to me yesterday when I went into the store again,’ she said. ‘I unlocked my office door and that’s when I realised that Mirren couldn’t have put the letter on my desk. Miss Hutton, was it?’

  ‘We know about your hopes for Roger Lawson too,’ I said, sweeping past the question; we would not be responsible for getting Miss Hutton into trouble if we could help it. There was a slight visible twinge at my words.

  ‘You spoke to Lady Lawson?’ she said.

  ‘She is a good friend to you,’ I said. ‘An old friend, I believe, but you’ve tested that friendship to its limits now. Why did you do it?’

  ‘Do what?’ said Mary.

  ‘Ask Lady Lawson to say her son jilted Mirren,’ I supplied. ‘The attachment between Mirren and Dugald is common knowledge. What could you hope to gain?’ Mary’s face had pinched up into a little frown and a little pursing of her mouth.

  ‘I just wanted a better . . . story,’ she said. ‘All her life will be now is her youth and her death. I wanted it to be nicer.’ Her eyes narrowed now and her voice grew cold over the next words. ‘And I didn’t want those Hepburns to be part of our memories of her.’

  ‘Those Hepburns,’ said Alec, wonderingly. ‘Why do you hate them so?’

  ‘I don’t hate them,’ said Mary loudly. ‘I wouldn’t waste hate on them. They are beneath my notice.’

  ‘But why?’ I said. ‘They should be rivals at worst, surely. If not colleagues, in a way. Allies?’ I was imagining the sharing of rolls of tuppences when change ran out; the careful timing of seasonal sales so that both lots could have a good go at the bargain hunters, but Mary’s lip had curled and she actually shuddered at the suggestion.

  ‘Johnny-come-latelys,’ she said. ‘Encroaching. Leeches – sucking away all the goodwill we worked so hard to build up in this town. They only came here for spite, you know. Why would Robert Hepburn open a store in a town that already had one, if not for spite? To do us down and laugh at us when we fell.’

  ‘But no one does business that way,’ I said. ‘Surely Mr Hepburn wanted a store here because here was where he lived? Or because here was where he managed to get premises to suit his needs? Why would he be spiteful? Why would he care?’

  ‘He’s not a Dunfermline man,’ said Mary Aitken. ‘He had no need to come here. He . . .’ S
he shuffled her feet a little and then carried on. ‘He followed Ninian. Ninian and Robert Hepburn started together in Patrick Thompson’s over in Edinburgh. I was there too and that’s where I met my husband. Of course, Ninian was a tailor and Hepburn was never anything but a draper’s clerk.’

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘They were friends at one time?’

  ‘It was John Aitken who made the leap and opened Aitkens’ Emporium,’ said Mary, not quite answering me. Her eyes lit up as she said the words. Still, after all these years, she was thrilled, as proud as she must have been on its opening day. ‘And Robert Hepburn never forgave Ninian for going off into the world and making his fortune, leaving him behind. Oh, he was a spiteful, nasty, conniving piece of work. Not a scrap of honour or goodness about him anywhere. And it took him thirty years to scrimp and scrape and go coiling round every Jew he could and sell his wife’s lockets to the backstreet dealers for an extra shilling but he got his wish in the end. Came here and set up against us.’

  ‘But – bear with me while I try to work this out, Mrs Aitken,’ I said. ‘Hepburns’ has been open for nineteen years?’ She nodded. ‘Weren’t Mr John and Mr Ninian both already dead by that time?’ She nodded again. Alec and I looked at one another, puzzled. Mary Aitken showed no signs of having said anything peculiar.

  ‘Ninian wasn’t cold in his grave,’ she said. ‘John was years gone. And I was away from home on a trip.’ I tried to look as though I knew nothing of this trip. ‘Abigail and Jack were newly married and they didn’t need me there, grieving, making the house sad for them,’ she said. ‘I went off alone.’

  ‘Newly married?’ said Alec. That did not chime with what Abigail had told us. ‘Five years, wasn’t it?’ Mary Aitken gave him a frozen stare, then shook herself.

  ‘Was it? I’d have said less, but five years is a new marriage to an old woman like me.’ She sniffed and tossed her head, changing the subject. ‘Anyway, you wouldn’t believe those wheedling, encroaching Hepburns while I was gone. Sucking up to Abby and Jack, tennis parties and card parties and dropping in, as if they’d never heard of mourning.’

  ‘But you just said you went away so that Abby and Jack could stop mourning and be happy,’ I said.

  ‘They’d have been happy enough at home,’ said Mary, her voice rising.

  ‘Certainly,’ I said. ‘Your daughter just said as much to us, Mrs Aitken. That the family was very happy to live in its own company. She made it sound most pleasant and cosy.’

  ‘Once I’d got rid of those Hepburns,’ said Mary, ‘it was. We were fine.’

  ‘And . . .’ Alec was struggling to make sense of what she was saying. ‘Did you think Mr Hepburn was spying? Trying to find out trade secrets and help himself to Aitkens’ success?’

  ‘No,’ said Mary. ‘It wasn’t Robert at all. He wouldn’t have dared. It was the son and that wife of his and her mother. Taking Abby and Jack away from us, trying to get them into the Hepburn “set”.’ She spat the word. ‘The Haddo “set”. All jolly fun and what a lark, darling. Lady Lawson had nothing to do with them, you know.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, wondering if I did actually. She did not know about Jack and Hilda and yet she sounded quite unhinged when she spoke of the Hepburns.

  ‘I came back just in time to stop their heads being turned completely,’ said Mary. Oh no you didn’t, I thought, or not Jack’s anyway. ‘I sent them packing, I can tell you.’ I sighed; even ignoring Jack, she was mistaken if she thought she landed some kind of stunning blow. One only had to hear Fiona Haddo talking in her amused voice or look at Hepburns’ lavish window displays on the day of the Aitkens’ jubilee to see that Mary had provided nothing but entertainment for the Hepburns with her jealous fury. I imagined that the Hepburns enjoyed the tease and did not think about the Aitkens much besides. Poor Mary, she had never learned that indifference is the best revenge and I felt very glad for her sake that she did not know how Hilda Hepburn had ill-used poor Abby, how completely one of her family had had his silly head turned.

  ‘So no chance of a rapprochement through the third generation then?’ said Alec. ‘Ninian snubbed Robert, Robin and Hilda patronised Abby and Jack and no one wanted Mirren and Dugald to heal the rift after all those years?’ He was nodding to himself, almost talking to himself really until Mary brought him up short with her crispest voice and most flashing glare.

  ‘You are remarkably free with my family’s Christian names for someone who has never been introduced to me,’ she said. Alec flushed.

  ‘I apologise,’ he said. ‘I used their names for ease of recognition only. What I mean is that Mr Ninian Aitken snubbed old Mr Hepburn, and then—’

  ‘Old Mr Hepburn?’ said Mary. Alec’s flush deepened; of course, old Mr Hepburn was her contemporary. Before he could take a third run at it with Seniors and Juniors at the ready, she swept on. ‘Besides, it wasn’t just about ancient feuds. I would not have let Mirren marry into that family if they had landed here from the other end of the country, strangers to us all.’ She smiled and it was not a pleasant smile.

  ‘Oh?’ I said, although I was sure I knew what unwelcome topic she was getting to.

  ‘They don’t know that I know,’ she said, her voice coated in a kind of delighted scorn, ‘but the fact is that Robert and Dulcie Hepburn had four daughters before Robert Junior came along.’ She paused, her eyes glittering. ‘And not one of them has ever seen the outside of a nursing home.’

  I nodded, trying to look neutral. Abigail had told us that Mary herself was no stranger to a nursing home and there was something about the way she passed on the gossip with such relish that sickened me.

  ‘How unfortunate,’ I said. ‘Ill health in a family is a great strain on everyone.’

  ‘I don’t mean ill health,’ said Mary. ‘I was being quite literal, Mrs Gilver. They never brought the babies home. Never announced their births after the first one or two. Four of them! And they tried to stop the world from knowing.’

  ‘The world can certainly be very unkind,’ I said.

  ‘I found out in my lying-in hospital when I was confined with Abigail,’ Mary said. She was absolutely livid now, drops of spittle forming at the corners of her mouth. ‘One of the nurses told me. As if I would let my Mirren, my girl, have anything to do with a family like that. Once I knew. Once it was all out in the open and their secrets weren’t their secrets any more. I went to Humbie to the nursing home and saw those Hepburn sisters, you know. Three of them are still alive. You could see them yourself if you care to. And they thought they could hide it!’

  ‘Mrs Aitken, please,’ said Alec. He spoke mildly but seemed only to incense her more.

  ‘Oh! Oh!’ she said. ‘You’d rather not think about such things, I suppose. You find it “distasteful”, eh?’

  ‘I find it illuminating,’ I said. I had given up on my neutral expression and supposed that I was now looking at her as though she were a white toad someone had told me to pick up and cradle. ‘Tell me, Mrs Aitken, did you take Mirren to the nursing home to visit these unfortunate women? Did you go that far?’

  ‘I would have,’ said Mary. ‘I didn’t need to. I explained it to her.’ All of a sudden all the fire went out of her as though someone had turned down the gas in a lantern. She sat back, the last peep of flame snuffed out. ‘I explained. And she . . . she died. I did that. That was me.’ She closed her eyes. ‘Our sins will surely find us out. My sins . . .’

  Alec, who has surprised me more times than I can list through the years of our friendship, delivered his greatest surprise then.

  ‘What about “Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much”?’

  Mary opened her eyes and gazed at him.

  ‘Don’t be so quick to blame yourself, Mrs Aitken,’ he said. ‘Your daughter Abigail has just told us that Mirren didn’t kill herself because of anything that came from you.’

  ‘Abigail said that? What did she mean?’

  ‘She wouldn’t say,’ said Alec, firmly. ‘It’s a fa
mily matter, I understand. Nothing to do with Mrs Gilver and me.’

  ‘Well, I must go and ask her,’ said Mary, rising up with some of her old vigour. ‘I can’t imagine what she means but I must ask her to tell me.’ She left us without another word, without even a goodbye or an order not to bother them again.

  I was glad that she had not waited to see us off the premises; I do not think I could have peeled myself off my chair for a king’s ransom.

  ‘My goodness,’ said Alec, when the silence had had time to settle around us. ‘Between the three of them, that was the most uncomfortable series of conversations I hope I will ever have to endure. You weren’t very sympathetic, Dan. What got into you?’

  ‘It’s a particular dislike of mine,’ I said. ‘Grisly news sucked like bon-bons.’ I shuddered.

  ‘But have we solved the mystery?’ said Alec. ‘Tied in all the ends?’

  ‘I think so,’ I said. ‘Hilda and Jack, obviously, knowing what they know. Abby, if my guess was right. Mary, without a shadow of a doubt. Even without the business rivalry – and my goodness, wasn’t she fierce? – her avoidance of the Hepburn “bad blood” accounts for her misgivings.’

  ‘Odd though, isn’t it?’ said Alec. ‘A woman who could marry her daughter off to a cousin and then suddenly grow so squeamish the next generation down.’

  ‘Oh, Alec, don’t!’ I said. ‘You sound like those horrid German scientists. What is it called, the thing they get so excited about?’

  ‘Eugenics,’ said Alec.

  ‘Well, it’s vile. As though we were dogs. Revolting.’

  ‘We don’t need to concern ourselves with it, thankfully,’ said Alec. ‘The point is that it could be two suicides after all. Two broken hearts. Star-crossed lovers indeed.’

  ‘But what about the inspector?’ I said. ‘And the gloves? And do we rely on the business rivalry to explain the Hepburn men’s opposition? We have no explanation for that otherwise.’